The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Omaha District will hold a public meeting
on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 from 6-8pm to gather input on modifying the
Cherry Creek Dam Water Control Plan to release more water from the dam
during extreme flooding events. The meeting will be held at the King Center
Recital Hall on the Auraria Campus, 855 Lawrence Way, Denver, Colorado.
Vouchers will be provided for free parking in the 7th Street Parking Garage
located next to the King Center. The Tivoli Parking Garage will also be
available as free overflow parking
(http://www.ahec.edu/files/general/Parking-Map.pdf).

There will be a brief presentation at 6:30pm followed by a question and
answer session and an open house. During the open house, you will have an
opportunity to talk with Corps team members about the proposed Water Control
Plan modifications and provide your input on potential impacts. You will
also be able to speak with officials from the Denver Office of Emergency
Management Homeland Security to learn more about that agency’s mission to
protect public safety and find out more information about how to develop a
personal action plan in the event of an emergency.

Input on the proposed Cherry Creek Water Control Plan modifications may be
submitted at the public meeting, emailed to kathryn.j.seefus@usace.army.mil
or mailed to: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Omaha District; CENWO-ED-HA;
ATTN: Katie Seefus; 1616 Capitol Avenue; Omaha, NE 68102-4901. Comments on the study must be postmarked or received by February 26, 2016.

Friends of Denver Parks, Steve Waldstein and Zelda Hawkins filed their petition for certiorari in the Colorado Supreme Court on October 28, 2015. The basis for the petition is that the Colorado Court of Appeals failed to follow Colorado Supreme Court precedent when it affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of our case without allowing witnesses to testify in a public trial.

The witnesses, which include not only private citizens, but also former city officials and employees, would have testified that Hampden Heights North Parks was designated with other parks by the Charter amendment in 1956, and was confirmed as a park with the 1996 Charter amendment.

Even though DPS has built a school in what used to be a park and natural area, petitioners are pressing the case forward so that, when the school is flooded by Cherry Creek or outlives its useful life after 40 years, the land can be returned to its rightful status as a public park, held in perpetuity for the citizens of Denver.

Think the wheels of justice turn slowly? At 10 a.m. today, Denver Public Schools will dedicate the Joe Shoemaker School, an elementary school that opened last month as the Hampden Heights Expeditionary School at 3333 South Havana Street, at the edge of southeast Denver. Meanwhile, a request to return nine acres of land beneath that school to the City of Denver is still in the Court of Appeals.

Construction of the school started in January 2014 on property that that had been part of the Hampden Heights Open Space, next to Paul A. Hentzell Park. That land was swapped by Denver with DPS in a complicated 2013 deal that also involved DPS turning over a building at 1330 Fox Street, which is becoming the Rose Andom domestic-violence resource center. Although a majority of the members of a parks advisory board had opposed the move, the city’s then parks-director overrode that vote, paving the way for Denver City Council to approve the deal in April 2013.

Opponents of the deal claimed that the Hampden Heights property was officially a park, having been used as open space since before 1956, and so under the city charter could not be released byDenver without an election; they organized as Friends of Denver Parks to fight the action in court.

The late Joe Shoemaker.

After a loss in Denver District Court where the judge upheld the “less than transparent land swap,” the group took its case to the Colorado Court of Appeals, where it had had a date on September 1. Given that the school was already up and running, Chief Appeals Judge Alan Loeb asked John Case, attorney for Friends of Denver Parks and a resident of the area, what the group wanted: “This isn’t about today or tomorrow — it’s about forty years from now, when parks land is even more scarce for an increasing population than it is today,” Case told the judge.

Joe Shoemaker certainly recognized how important parks land was to the population — and ensured that Denver had plenty to enjoy. A legislator who founded the Greenway Foundation in 1974, he pushed to transform the South Platte River from the stinking mess it had become to a true amenity for Denver and surrounding areas.

Shoemaker, a longtime supporter of the education as well as the environment, passed away in 2012…before the more recent stink over the property transfer that made the Joe Shoemaker School possible.